JUNE 2016: PISLAP Conference in Philadelphia

Words: Elaine Quinn

Image Credits: PISLAP

Reading Time: 30 second

The Project for Integrating Spirituality, Law, and Politics (PISLAP, pronounced pie-slap) is a nationwide network of lawyers, law professors, law students, legal workers, and others who are seeking to develop a new spiritually-informed approach to law and social change.

At the organisation’s conference in June 2016, a series of thought-provoking and inspiring workshops took place with titles such as: ‘Restorative Justice for Building Community and Addressing Conflict: An Introduction to Circles and Conferencing’; ‘The Courtroom as an Arena of Moral Opportunity’; and ‘From the Cushion to the Very Heart of the Struggle for Social Transformation: Mindful Self-Care Practices for Social Justice Advocates’amongst many others.

The organisation believes that human beings long to live in a world in which people can fully recognize and affirm each other’s humanity and that law can help bring that world into being through new legal processes that foster empathy, compassion, and mutual understanding. This in turn requires a definition of justice that goes beyond what can be achieved through the clash of individual rights that characterizes the existing adversary system toward a vision of justice that is based on the healing of the alienation between self and other that is at the heart of so much social injustice and social conflict. Its work can be divided broadly into these areas: transforming legal education, transforming the lawyer-client relationship, participating in and supporting the worldwide movements toward Restorative Justice, Collaborative Law, and Transformative and Understanding-based Mediation, and transforming the practice of law itself through bringing a spiritual-activist component to everyday private law practice and to the provision of legal aid and public defender services.